I
Shot Andy Goldsworthy
Thom
Verratti
I’ve recently become fascinated by Andy
Goldsworthy, the British environmental sculptor who creates
installations which interact with nature and time in astounding
ways. Dr. Lucien and I were talking about it just the other
day. “Do you know about Andy Goldsworthy?” I asked
him as he was passing my office door, filleting a salmon.
He stopped abruptly. “The British environmental
sculptor who creates installations which interact with nature
and time in astounding ways?” he said. Dr. Lucien has
one of those internet connections in his glasses.
“No,” I answered rudely. I hate smartasses.
“I’ve just come back from watching
him build snow arches at the North Pole,” Dr. Lucien said
nonchalantly. “I gave him the idea of rock-stacking for
his next project. He asks me for ideas.”
“I could be an environmental sculptor, you
know,” I said somewhat petulantly. “If I didn’t
have so much filing to do.” I dug my hands into the pile
of loofah on my desk and let it trickle out again in an unruly
mound, to emphasize how busy I was.
“Oh, is that the trizzle, dizzog?”
he said airily, walking off. (Dr. Lucien doesn’t keep
up with “the street” and has no idea that izzle
is so over.)
I determined to start in on my first experiments
with environmental sculpture right then and there. To begin,
I made a stack of suet on top of my computer monitor, reasoning
that the heat of the CRT would filter up through the grille
and slowly transform the suet stack into a model of Rockefeller
Center, or at least into a pool of suet. This proved to be less
than satisfying, as my computer is one of those cardboard props
they put on the acres of blond-wood desks at IKEA. But turning
my attention to the river of canola oil which runs down the
center of our building’s corridor (there was a pumping
accident in the late 80’s which none of us asks about),
I found that by carefully diverting the flow with staplers pilfered
from my co-workers’ desks, I could cause the slick to
spell out the word “Malt-o-Meal.”
Encouraged, I hurried home to see what environmental
sculpture I could create from my bachelor apartment’s
forty-three wastepaper baskets and commercial freezer full of
squid. But unbeknownst to me, Dr. Lucien had taken our little
exchange as a personal challenge. Even as I was stuck in late-morning
traffic on the outer spillway, he had taken up position at the
top of the City Hall steps with a sack of unbearded mussels,
a Vornado fan, and Ernest Borgnine. (Although we are old friends,
Dr. Lucien is pathologically competitive.)
Ultimately, whatever message about Art that Ernest
and Dr. Lucien had wanted to convey was lost amidst the roar
of schoolchildren amassed for the daily Your Civic Lesson in
Action tour of the mayor’s offices. They did succeed in
setting the world land-speed record for a (bearded or unbearded)
mussel, but this must have been cold comfort to Dr. Lucien,
who will settle for nothing less than my head on a platter or,
barring that, a firm triple-cream Brie. And, though I tried
to match the power and majesty of Andy Goldsworthy with an installation
where I hung all of my dress shirts on hangers in a row, and
closed the closet doors, I never did catch on with the salon
crowd. I went back to work five or six months later with my
tail between my legs.
I had lost my job. With time, the suet had melted
and had shorted out the power to our entire grid. It was a setback,
but I later heard that the resultant blackout had spelled out
“DermaFlex” to travelers flying overhead—so
at least it wasn’t a complete loss! That’s what
I heard, anyway.
....
Thom Verratti is recently
unemployed and is available for an
executive position in the fats, oils, or general rendering industries.
Serious inquiries only.
